It [SIRTI] was always about a sales pitch. I recall one meeting when a former EWU president announced the latest “innovative” idea: It “promised” to create a new “high-tech” (it always had to be “high-tech”) company that in, say, five years would generate (pick a number) in revenue and (pick a number) new jobs. No evidence, just numbers, seemingly pulled out of a hat.

We’ve written a lot about SIRTI on this blog. Take a look. Shutting down this former funding gatekeeper would be a good thing. As a former Board member said, SIRTI did more to hinder economic growth than anything else.

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LaunchPad, Connect Northwest and Startup Weekend Spokane present a free event for entrepreneurs, startups and anyone interested in learning more about the emerging startup scene.

We are celebrating the Top 25 Startups for a hang out at a cool location with one of the best downtown views: The 3rd Floor Coworking Center and Courtyard at the Seahorn Building in Steam Plant Square, 157 S Lincoln. The event goes from 5:30pm-8:30pm.LaunchPad, Connect Northwest and Startup Weekend Spokane present a free event for entrepreneurs, startups and anyone interested in learning more about the emerging startup scene.

[They left out the date but their Facebook page says it is set for October 2nd…X]

We are celebrating the Top 25 Startups for a hang out at a cool location with one of the best downtown views: The 3rd Floor Coworking Center and Courtyard at the Seahorn Building in Steam Plant Square, 157 S Lincoln. The event goes from 5:30pm-8:30pm.

Attendees will:

-Meet founders and representatives from top local startups

-Learn more about the upcoming Startup Weekend Spokane

-Get an update from past Startup Weekend winners and participants

-Connect with local service providers supporting the growing Startup Ecosystem

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Check out LaunchPad INW – the original, local social networking (and in person networking) group has transitioned to a weekly newsletter sharing information on local innovation and entrepreneurship activities.

The co-founder of TechStars explains why communities fail to have an entrepreneurship community. He lists six broad categories that hinder startup and economic growth – and incredibly, Spokane ranks high on all six categories (most of which have been previously written about on this blog – See the History of Spokane Economic Plans and Recommendations, in links to right of this page).

This seems a reasonable summary that matches up with Spokane and may give hints as to how to overcome the problems …

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Independent online resources where you can monitor the long term trends yourself. They have the data used in the charts on this web site, and often have the same charts too. This blog has brought up nothing new – everyone else knows what is going on!

www.spokanetrends.org – Community Indicators of Spokane, operated by Institute for Public Policy and Economic Analysis in the College of Business and Public Administration at EWU. This is a 5-star site with loads of data, charts, data you can download and useful interpretation of the data. They have done a superb, outstanding, excellent job here. If you only follow one web site, follow this one!

WorkforceExplorer.com. Operated by the Washington State Employment Security Department. Loads of data on employment, jobs and economic conditions throughout the state. Easy to use once you get the hang of it; another 5-star site. Far better real world data than anything you will ever see in the local media.

SpokaneAirports.net. The data is not presented in a useful, downloadable format, but they do provide contemporary passenger and cargo data on their web site (2-stars). They do not provide a useful history, however. I may post the data on this web site in case anyone else wants to waste their time with this.

More links on the right side of this page. Take a look what happens when you rcity has a real newspaper – charts! Thank you for your interest and visits to the blog.

Due to a recent Court ruling in Oregon, I may take this entire web site offline in the future. If the government provides more First Amendment protections to “journalists” than to citizens and the government decides who is a journalist, then what happens to the First Amendment freedom of the press concept? Basically, the First Amendment is thrown away as the government selectively choose who is a journalist and who is not.

Every year, Spokane residents fall further and further behind their counterparts in the rest of Washington and in the nation. This chart shows that Spokane per capita income was at 90% of the State’s level in the 1970s, but has declined to less than 80% of the State’s level by 2008 (the orange line). In 2010, average wages rose 2.7% nationwide, but rose only 2.3% in Spokane County. Stated another way, average wages rose 17% faster everywhere else while and Spokane residents’ income fell relative to everyone else.

The next chart highlights the wage differential for those working in higher skilled jobs in Spokane. Education and health care, which are shown, are similar to King County. (Government wage data was not available for this specific comparison). As we move to the right into higher skilled jobs like manufacturing, finance and engineering, the wage differentials are enormous. Spokane will never attract a national or world class high skilled workforce when wages in Spokane are up to 50% less than across the state. Which is why the State and local power brokers have identified Spokane as the low wage, low skilled industry cluster for the state.

About

In early 2009 I wondered why several prominent businesses had closed and moved elsewhere and began to look into figuring that out. This web site is the culmination of a part time hobby in understanding why many companies closed or left Spokane.

Click on the "Start Here" link. I was surprised to learn these problems have been around for decades and are documented in official reports on the region's economy.

This web site is based on actual data. Because much of the data is sour, that may be misinterpreted as cynical. There is a difference between realist and cynical. But regarding the review of 30 years of economic strategy reports - that's borderline cynical and with good reason.

The purpose of this web site is to share what I found - not to pick a fight. Data sources are usually referenced; some data had to be re-typed by hand and I could have made a mistake. Some data sources could be out of date or might not make sense - I've tried to identify those. Some may be wrong - that happens - consider this like the rumor web sites and verify for yourself. May be my interpretations are hare brained. Please post corrections in the comments. I hope the information is useful to you. Thank you. If you spot an error, please leave a comment with the correction.

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